The Daily Goodbye

Mildred Ellen Orton, 99, who founded the Vermont Country Store mail order company, "Purveyors of the Practical and Hard-to-Find," died Thursday at her home in Weston, Vt.

Mrs. Orton founded the mail-order company with her husband Vrest in 1945 and the physical store in Weston the following year. Now online and run by the third and fourth generation of Orton shopkeepers, the Vermont Country Store sells the sorts of old-timey, durable goods that you won't find at your neighborhood mall: twill tent jumpers, ceramic chickadee salt and pepper shakers, a variety of clotheslines, tiddledy winks and those plastic looms you used to use when you were a kid to make potholders.

The Vermont Country store probably does not sell the work of Frank Frazetta, a fantasy artist whose images of musclebound knights and buxom dames graced the covers of comic books and album covers for decades. Mr. Frazetta died Monday after a stroke; he was 82.

Last year, one of his paintings, which served as the cover of a paperback version of "Conan the Barbarian," sold for $1 million.

Lastly, police are investigating the death of LPGA golfer Erica Blasberg, who died Sunday in a suburb of Las Vegas at the age of 25. It's unclear whether she was the victim of foul play.